Local Girls : An Island Summer Novel (9781416564171) (15 page)

“It's 6:01.”

I opened my left eye and glanced at the clock on my night table—6:01.

“This is the big day and we're all going down to the deli for the ribbon-cutting ceremony.”

This time I opened my left
and
my right eye. I even managed to lift my head off the pillow. “The what?”

Lexi patted my knee. “I knew that would get you. I'm just kidding about the ribbon cutting, but I'm not kidding about everyone going down there together. So get up and get
dressed. Mom and Dad are almost ready. I'll even whip you up one of my famous egg sandwiches.”

“You don't even have a famous egg sandwich.”

“Not yet!” she sang. “But today that changes.”

“I'm not going anywhere, Lexi.”

This time Lexi wasn't playing games. She stood over me and spoke in a very measured, very don't-screw-with-me tone. “Look, you don't want to work there, fine. But the least you can do is come with us to open the place.”

“I'm too tired. I'll come down after work.” I reached for my sheet and pulled it up to my neck. “I promise.”

“Fine,” Lexi agreed, and left my room.

It was just about the biggest day in the Bryant household in the last year, if you don't count the day my dad announced he was taking a leave of absence from his job. My mom had still been questioning whether it was a good idea even as Lexi gave my dad a pep talk on his way out the door to tell his boss. It was hard to believe that was almost five months ago. Summer had seemed so far away then, and now here it was. Two contractors and five months later, the Pot Belly Deli was finally going to open its doors to the public.

“Bye, Kendra!” my mom called from downstairs. “We'll see you tonight!”

“Bye,” I called back, and then decided to add at the last minute, “Good luck!” But I was too late. The front door had closed and I could already hear them outside in the driveway—Lexi, Bart, my mom and dad—piling into my dad's car.

I'd gotten what I wanted. I was still in bed and could probably stay there another twenty minutes. My morning routine had become a science and it didn't take me more than forty minutes from the time I got up until I was at the bus stop. So
I don't know why I decided to get out of bed and go to my bedroom window, but that's exactly what I did. And when I got there I watched as the proprietors of Edgartown's newest deli drove away.

I could hear the four of them laughing as the car disappeared out of sight, and the only thing I could think of was how it reminded me of Lexi and Bart's wedding. The only things missing were empty soup cans tied to the bumper and a
JUST CRAZY
sign taped to the trunk.

During my first weeks at the inn I learned that each of the servers worked on having their own rap. Camille was a junior at Boston College. She loved to wait on tables of guests from the city so she could share her knowledge of all things Boston, and in return they loved to leave her big tips. Susan and Tamara were friends from Connecticut who shared tables, tips, and, during the school year, a dorm room. They were sophomores at Trinity saving up to spend their junior year abroad. They mentioned this to guests within the first five minutes of seating them, and it paid off. Increasing the cultural awareness of two college girls was worth at least a 20 percent tip. Marcus, a freshman studying film at NYU, was always angling for a table of New Yorkers, figuring they might know someone in the entertainment business willing to give a chance to the next Steven Spielberg (which is how he described himself to guests). My first week Marcus managed to get the name of the best friend of Meg Ryan's second cousin. I wasn't sure how far that would get him, but from the way he practically carried the couple out of the dining room on his shoulders, you'd think Meg Ryan had just agreed to adopt him.

My rap was easy and didn't require a whole lot of creativity. I was the local girl.

“It must be so great living on the island,” guests would gush to me, and, because agreeable servers were highly tipped servers, I'd gush back, “It's really wonderful.”

“Tell us all the great places only the locals know about,” they'd whisper to me, as if we were all holding out on them, saving the best restaurants and shopping and beaches for ourselves. I didn't tell them that the majority of the places they ate, shopped, and hung out weren't even open when they weren't here.

Instead, I'd lean in close and tell them the names of restaurants they already knew, beaches they were already planning to go to, and they'd look at one another like they'd been insiders all along. But there was one place I'd started keeping to myself when guests peppered me with questions about out-of-the-way beaches or good fishing spots. It wasn't like Henry and I were the only people who knew about Seth's Pond. It was just that the Seth's Pond Henry took me to that morning was nothing like the place I thought I knew, and I didn't feel like sharing it with our guests. There were so many things we had to share with strangers during the summer season, I thought I deserved at least one thing for myself.

I'd been at the inn barely two weeks, but already I knew that Shelby was the boss of the kitchen. Wendy never came out and said it, and she still handled breakfast on her own when it was Shelby's day off, but when any of the servers walked through the swinging door, we knew better than to think we were doing anything other than working for Shelby. She begrudgingly let us use the toaster, but even then you
could tell by the way she kept an eye on us that she thought we were doing it all wrong.

“It's a toaster, Shelby,” I said, removing the two slices of whole wheat that had popped up. “I think I can handle it.”

But instead of agreeing with me, she pointed the spoon in her hand toward the rows of jellies, jams, and honeys lined up on the counter. “There's a new black raspberry preserve, so don't forget to include it when you're telling guests what we have to offer.”

Sometimes I'd watch Shelby and try to picture her at UMass, walking to classes or hanging out in a dorm, or even sitting in some cavernous lecture hall listening intently to a professor discuss the governing philosophies of Aristotle or Plato. But I just couldn't do it. Shelby looked like she belonged in a kitchen, not a lecture hall or a sorority or a university library.

Before Lexi's brilliant idea to open the deli, my mom sometimes had the Food Network on in the background while she paid bills or cleaned the house or sewed. After Lexi's brilliant idea, I think it was the only channel my mom watched. And it wasn't like any of the shows even talked about making sandwiches, unless it was some funky panini I'd never touch, like goat cheese and asparagus. Still, this spring, no matter what time of day, the Food Network was on in our house and one thing I noticed was that there were two types of hosts on those shows. Either the chefs looked like they taste-tested every single dish they made and never came across a food they didn't like, or they were skinny little things that resembled glamorous game show hosts more than cooks who spent their days surrounded by pounds of butter.

Shelby reminded me of the former.

It's not that Shelby was fat, because I never saw her stick her fingers in the muffin batter or test a cheese Danish by helping herself to one or two. But you definitely wouldn't call her skinny either. If I had to describe Shelby's shape, I'd say she reminded me of the fish sticks my mom used to make me eat for dinner, kind of dense and rectangular. The fact that she reminded me of food would probably please Shelby, only she'd instead prefer something from breakfast, like a French toast stick.

Shelby was way more into food than looking cute while grating orange zest. I imagined that when everyone was moving into their dorms and checking out the people walking down the hall, identifying who would be the pretty girl, the hot guy, or the girl most likely to end up drunk and passed out in the bathroom stall, they probably looked at Shelby and didn't think much at all, except that, with her short brown bob and T-shirt and jeans, she looked perfectly average.

Every morning it was the same with Shelby. She'd boss us around and act like she was doing the most important job on earth. We took it, of course, because we depended on tips. And, let's be honest, the best thing for tips was a guest who'd just tasted the most amazing lobster eggs Benedict of his life. So none of us pointed out to Shelby that it was
just breakfast,
even though we all knew Shelby took the first meal of the day way too seriously.

When breakfast was over and the other servers left the kitchen, Shelby would talk to me like a normal person. I wouldn't say we'd become friends, and I still did way more talking than she did, but ever since that morning when I told her about Mona, Shelby almost seemed to enjoy our conversations, which was why I decided to see if she could
help me with something I'd been thinking about. Not Henry's kiss—although just about every third thought I'd had all day involved Henry and that kiss—but something that he and I had talked about last night.

“Hey, Shelby, how would you go about finding someone?” We had six orders for veggie sandwiches on focaccia, and Shelby knew I hated using the paring knife, so she'd offered to slice the cucumbers and tomatoes while I chopped the basil.

“Is this anyone in particular?” she asked, reaching for another tomato.

“What if the someone was an old friend you wanted to locate? Where would you start?” I'd been thinking about it since last night. I'd been thinking about
a lot
since last night. After my parents and Lexi and Bart had left the house, I crawled back into bed and ran through the events of the night before in my head, how Henry's fingers settled so naturally around my own when he led me toward the courtyard for the ghost tour. How his lips were cool and tasted of mint with just a hint of chocolate. How I'd closed my eyes and felt the hair on my arms stand on end when Henry's lips parted and his tongue searched for mine, and the goose bumps when he found it for that fleeting second before I pulled away. It shouldn't have even gotten that far. As soon as Henry moved toward me I should have known.

When he dropped me off in my driveway I practically jumped out of the truck and yelled good-bye over my shoulder as I ran to my front door. One part of me was afraid of what would happen if I stayed in the front seat with him for even a minute while parked in the darkness. The other part was sick with guilt. The kind of guilt that turns your stomach into knots and forces you to come up with all sorts of excuses
for what you'd just done—it was an accident, I didn't mean for it to happen, the ghosts made me do it.

I doubted Henry would tell Mona, but even if Mona didn't find out what happened, I knew. And I refused to be lumped in with the rest of her Whittier friends, even though I'd done exactly what they wanted to do. And I knew there was a way to show Mona that I was different, to show her that I was the one person she could always count on.

“Well, I guess I'd start with what I knew about this person,” Shelby said.

“He was here for a summer, or part of a summer.”

“He?” Shelby raised her eyebrows at me. “When?”

Before answering, I did the math in my head. Mona's birthday was supposed to be May 16, but she and Henry were a few weeks early, arriving on May Day. “If I had to guess, I'd say sometime around early August.”

“And what was he doing here?”

“Visiting,” I told her, and then added, “Maybe sailing, I think.”

“Well, was he visiting or sailing?” she asked.

“What's the difference?”

“If he was just visiting, I'd say you don't have a chance in hell of figuring out who this guy is. But if he was sailing, you may be in luck.”

“Why?”

“Because if he sailed he may have been here for one of the races.”

“And if he was here around the beginning of August, then he could have sailed . . .” I continued, already seeing where this was going.

“In the regatta,” we finished together.

I let the idea that I could find the answer to all of Mona's questions sink in. Only I still didn't know where to start.

“So now what?”

“So now you just go down to the yacht club and ask to see whatever they have on the regatta. There had to be some sort of list of people who sailed in the past.”

Could it really be that simple? Had Mona been so preoccupied with the idea of waiting for her father to come back to the island to find her, creating all sorts of elaborate ideas of how he'd ask around town until he found the girl he met that summer seventeen years ago, that she never realized all she had to do was walk down to the wharf, go into the yacht club, and ask to see the racing teams from seventeen years prior?

“Easier still, you could just go to the library and look at old newspapers.”

I was all for easier. “That's a great idea.”

“So what's the story with this guy you're looking for?”

“It's nothing.”

“You're willing to go to an awful lot of effort to find out the answer for nothing.”

“Maybe. So what's on the breakfast menu for next week?” I asked, knowing Shelby still wanted an answer but also that she wouldn't be able to resist talking about food.

“I was thinking crepes with berries and ricotta cheese.”

“Which berries?”

“I don't know what looks good yet, which is why I'll be heading over to Morning Glory Farm on Sunday.”

“Don't you have anything better to do on your day off?” I asked, then realized, from Shelby's reaction, that I should probably rephrase my question. “I just meant, you're going grocery shopping on your day off?”

My second attempt didn't make it sound any better.

Shelby finished up the tomatoes and started on the piquant peppers. “You think I'd trust anyone else to pick out ingredients for my meals?”